Category: Gun Rights

Stopping Violence Against Women

I often hear people talking about the problem of violence against women and their desire to find a solution. When you mention arming women many of these people will give you a long spewing of bullshit on how that’s not the solution. Well Mr. Addley of Canada gets it:

With regards to Russell Williams, we must all be reminded that none of the women encountered by him had a legal right to self defense of their own persons by reason of a readily available handgun.

Thanks to Wendy Cukier every women in Canada will remain an easy target for violence due to the fact that she will never be able to avail herself of the most effective and efficient force equalizer known today.

For if any of these young women had been able to legally carry a loaded handgun they would have possessed the necessary force to repel any menacing threat that could of come their way.

A .45 caliber handgun turns a 110 lb women into a 310lb behemoth.

I really like that last line. Nothing levels the playing field in a fight like a firearm. You can be the smallest and weakest person on the planet but if you have a firearm on your person you can stand your ground against the largest and strongest person alive. This is because of a simple fact, all people have an allergy to bullet holes.

I often find it ironic that the biggest supporters and participants in the right to carry are men. Woman should be far more gung-ho about carrying firearms as they are very likely to be targets of violent criminals. You can rest assured that a rape will be thwarted if a woman shoots her would-be rapist dead.

Lead Ammunition Ban Take Two

Remember when the Center for Biodiversity petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban all lead ammunition in the United States? Well the petition flopped and nothing came of it because frankly, it’s stupid. Now the dip shits at the Center for Biodiversity are suing the EPA:

Three environmental groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to force it to prevent lead poisoning of wildlife from spent ammunition and lost fishing tackle.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court by the Center for Biological Diversity, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the hunters group Project Gutpile. It comes after the EPA denied their petition to ban lead ammunition and lead fishing tackle, which the groups say kills 10 million to 20 million birds and other animals a year by lead poisoning.

OK it was actually three sets of dip shits but I rest my case. The funny thing is the group is claiming 10 million to 20 million birds are killed each year by lead poisoning. Of course I’ve not seen any scientific study that demonstrates any proof of this and I believe if the death toll was that high we’d notice something was amiss. It’s not like 10 million to 20 million random corpses of birds would go unnoticed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Also between 10 million and 20 million? That’s one Hell of a cap in estimation. The fudge factor is literally 10 million birds, what kind of estimation is that and how did they come to estimate it? I also find it rather funny that the Center for Biodiversity believe they know the EPA’s authority better than the fucking EPA:

In August, the EPA denied the ammunition part of the petition, saying it didn’t have authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act. A few weeks ago, it rejected the fishing tackle portion, saying the petition didn’t demonstrate a ban was necessary to protect against unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, as required by the law.

In the lawsuit, the groups say that EPA erred when it said it didn’t have the authority to ban lead ammunition. They argued that the legislative history of the Toxic Substances Control Act makes it clear that components of ammunition – shots and bullets – may be regulated as chemical substances.

Believe me when it comes to authority government agencies know their boundaries and are always looking for ways to expand them.

Guns on Trains

I have good news for both of you Amtrak passengers. Starting December 15th you’ll be able to legally check an unloaded, locked, and cased firearm into baggage on Amtrak trains. What that means is you can do the same thing on Amtrak trains as you’ve been able to do on airplanes. There is something interesting in this article though:

Amtrak officials told the Bee that Amtrak, a federally funded train system, is retrofitting train cars for gun storage. There are no estimates of yet as to how many people will take advantage of the changes.

For some reason Amtrak has been doing it’s damnedest to bar passengers from transporting firearms on their trains. It seems they’ve found a potential delayer in “requiring retrofitting” of their train cars. As far as I know you’ve been able to check baggage on Amtrak trains forever so I’m unsure as of why they’d have to do any retrofit thus this seems to be s a delaying tactic. We’ll have to wait and see on that.

Oh, and of course the Brady Campaign has their bat-shit crazy unanchored in reality response to this:

Daniel Vice of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence countered that the rule change makes it easier for terrorists to bring weapons on trains with intent to do harm. He said his group and Amtrak police are pleased, however, to have won concessions requiring locked storage and 24-hour advance notice.

Yes because those evil terrorists wouldn’t bring a firearm on board without this ruling… that allows firearms to be transported in checked baggage just like on airplanes. I really wonder if anybody at the Brady Campaign has any roots left in reality or if they’ve all left this plane of existence for their deluded version of our world. What’s even more interesting is the following quote from Paul Helmke a couple of months ago:

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he “doesn’t have problems with people transporting guns on trains so long as steps are taken to make sure they’re secured and properly stowed.”

I guess when your cause has no roots in reality it makes it easier to change your mind ever thirty seconds.

Wisconsin School Hostage Situation

If you haven’t heard there was a hostage situation in a Wisconsin school. Some punk kid came in packing two firearms and held his class hostage. Thankfully nobody was killed and the kid turned one of his firearms onto himself when the police arrive.

I’m glad to report the situation ended with nobody of consequence being injured or killed (a punk who takes a classroom hostage is not a person of consequence in my book). What’s interesting is how the situation is being reported. This was a hostage situation yes some news sites are still calling it a school shooting.

I think this story exemplifies the fact that crazy is crazy and makes a case yet again for allowing teachers to be armed in the classroom. This situation ended as well as could be hoped but most of the time we don’t hear such good news. Crazy people are dangerous and this story once again demonstrates the fact that people in our schools are helpless when one of these crazies come into the “gun free-zone” with firearms and an intent to cause harm. This crazy ended up holding 23 helpless people hostage with no real threat of retaliation should he decide to start killing those hostages (yes the police will eventually retaliate but if the crazy is planning on killing himself anyways it matters not). The best way to end a hostage situation is to prevent it from happening in the first place and the best way to do that is having a populace that can defend itself against the crazies.

St. Paul Police Steal a Gun

Here’s an interesting story involving a carry permit holder getting his gun stolen from him by the St. Paul police:

Thomas Hackbarth, 58, was stopped in his car on Nov. 16 after a security guard saw him with a gun in the parking lot about 5 p.m., an hour after the clinic closed. Police ordered him out of his car at gunpoint and handcuffed and questioned him before taking his gun and letting him go.

Hackbarth, who has a conceal and carry permit, picked up his gun from police on Tuesday. He was not arrested or charged, and police have closed the case, said police spokesman Andy Skoogman.

Basically the St. Paul police responded to a “man with a gun” call. That part made sense but the fact that they stole is gun from him without cause is appalling. The key here is they didn’t charge him, they didn’t arrest him, they just confiscated his firearm and left. Unless somebody is being charged with a crime the police have no right in confiscating property of a private citizen.

Stories like this are why I carry concealed, really well concealed. My gun sits in an inside the waistband holster with a shirt tucked in around it. Of course being this is a Red Star article they had to throw in a bit of bias:

Hackbarth said that he always carries his fully loaded gun, and understands why the security guard was alarmed.

Emphasis mine. The wording there is meant to create fear in the reader that a man not only had a gun, not only was it loaded, but it was fully loaded. For fuck sake the man was carrying a revolver, fully loaded means six rounds in most cases. Is he supposed to carry it partially loaded? Maybe he should play Russian roulette with an attacker. And people wonder why I call the Star Tribune the Red Star.

Did I mention Mr. Hackbarth is a state representative? I would love to see more representatives with carry permits who actively carry, good on him. Of course if I were him I’d also take action against the St. Paul police department for putting my life in danger by confiscating my means of self-defense without cause.

Something Doesn’t Quite Add Up Here

Via MNGunTalk I came across a story that really has me scratching my head. The story is titled The story of two guns that killed police officers. Right there I knew this story was going to be bad as no mention of the wielders of the firearms were mentioned. Of course it gets better… much better. First the hyperbole:

The compact stainless-steel .45-caliber pistol was forged in a factory in Brazil in the summer of 2006 – 4,700 miles and two years away from a fateful encounter on a narrow North Philadelphia street near Temple University.

The author is setting up the article to be about the gun right from the get go.

From there, the $250 firearm began a 680-day odyssey through at least four states, four owners and two crime scenes before ending up in the hands of a 27-year-old parolee who used it to kill police officer Patrick McDonald.

Oh the gunman is finally mentioned after two paragraphs of setting up the gun as the focus of the story.

As part of an investigation of the deaths of 511 police officers killed by firearms since 2000, The Washington Post took an in-depth look at the circuitous paths taken by two guns. One is the Taurus. The other is a .380-caliber FEG semiautomatic pistol used in the slaying of an Indiana state trooper.

They were going to follow the lives of the gunmen but found that story to be too dull. Everybody expects the gunmen to be lowlife criminals whereas you never can guess the story behind a rabid killing machine such as a firearm! The author also decided it would be a spot of fun to target one of the gun shops:

The two guns were initially sold by federally licensed firearms dealers, the Taurus at the South Carolina pawnshop, the .380 at a high-volume gun store outside Chicago. At least three guns sold at the Chicago area store, Chuck’s Gun Shop, turned up in fatal shootings of police, the most of any store in The Post’s review.

Because if I sell you something and you use it in a crime it would be best to imply it was somehow my fault for selling you the tool. This is very important because your moral fiber is instantly known to me when you walk into my store. Now we get into the meat of the problem:

The .380’s sale involved a “straw purchaser,” a person who buys a gun on behalf of someone else and falsely claims to be the intended owner. The Taurus’s sale looked like a straw purchase, with the man who first bought the gun quickly selling it to a felon for a $150 profit.

Straw purchases are illegal. What the author just stated here were the two guns the followed were legally purchased and then illegal sold to ineligible owners.

In one case, a 19-year-old felon acquires a handgun casually, as payment for a bet on a game of basketball, tucks it into his pants and later uses it to kill an Indiana trooper. In the other, a fugitive from a Philadelphia halfway house tries to escape from a pursuing officer and pulls the gun as they fight on the street. Both stories illustrate how firearms dramatically increase the danger in already tense situations, creating irrevocable outcomes from panicky decisions.

Really? I thought both stories demonstrated that violent criminals are dangerous and thus any situation involving them will be volatile. Violent people are violent regardless of the tool they have at hand.

Mack lied on the required federal paperwork, answering no to a question about whether he used illegal drugs. In fact, Mack, who worked as a laborer for a masonry business, later testified that he had smoked marijuana every day since he was 13. But he had no criminal record, and the required background check did not prevent him from buying a gun.

Oh my god! A person with no criminal history was able to purchase a firearm? HOLY FUCK IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD! We need to allow the government to take away the rights of people who haven’t been convicted in a court of law NOW! Seriously what a fucking tool the author must be.

On Sept. 9, 2007, the Taurus figured in a nonfatal shootout at a Sunoco gas station between two men in southwest Philadelphia. Both were injured and went to a hospital. Police responding to reports of gunfire found spent cartridges from .45-caliber and .22-caliber pistols, but no guns. The .45-caliber cartridges were later linked to the Taurus.

Just as a side note I want it known that if I’m ever attacked by a criminal with a gun the .45 caliber casings will most likely be from my gun. Glock 30SF for the win!

Giddings had been released from prison 36 days earlier after serving eight years of a 12-year sentence for aggravated assault. A judge had ordered him to report to a halfway house, but Giddings soon absconded in violation of his parole. When several police officers, acting on a tip that Giddings was at a house in the area, tried to arrest him, he fought with them and escaped. Now, he was wanted for aggravated assault on the officers as well as the parole violation.

So a criminal with a violent past attacked an officer? Why the fuck was he out of prison four years early is my primary question here. Oh that’s right we have to make room in the prisons for all the non-violent offenders our government seems to want put away.

Giddings then stood over the officer and pumped more bullets into him. He hopped back on the bicycle, but before he could get away, two officers arrived in response to McDonald’s call for assistance. At least one exchanged gunfire with Giddings, killing him with shots to the head and chest, according to the police report. One of the officers was shot in the hip. The other was not injured.

I like how the author emphasizes the gun when the criminal uses it but emphasizes the officers when the police use them. Also I’d like to note that the police used those evil bad horrible guns to stop the violent criminal. Wait I’m sure the author will tell us that since the police are better than you and me trained extensively in the use of firearms they should be the only ones to have them. Now to the next story about the evils of firearms:

Jeter later said in an interview with The Post that he got the .380 from a friend, whom he refused to identify. The man owed him $350 from a bet over a game of pickup basketball. Jeter had bumped into him at Hook Fish & Chicken, a fast-food restaurant in Chicago, about nine blocks from where Vaughn said he sold the pistol.

Obviously this Jeter fellow is an upstanding citizen and the gun turned him into an evil man.

“I know it’s not legal to have guns in Chicago,” Jeter said. “But who doesn’t have a gun? That’s Chicago.”

Wait… so criminals are willing to ignore the law? Basically Jeter just made the best case against gun control you could ever make, he ignored the laws and had a gun anyways. When you ban guns only criminals will have guns is the correct phrase here.

He tucked the gun into the front pocket of his jeans and tossed his fast-food bag into a white 1993 Chevrolet Caprice that had been stolen six days earlier from a Sears parking lot in southwest Chicago. The thief passed the car on to Jeter, who used a screwdriver to start it.

Yup an upstanding citizen that the gun turned into an evil man. He certainly wasn’t hanging around criminals or anything previous to owning that evil gun.

Jeter took off to meet a 16-year-old girl in Gary, Ind.

Wait a minute…

19-year-old Darryl Jeter.

Huh. There’s something fishy about that but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“I ask myself every day, ‘Why?’ ” said Jeter, now 26. “What was I thinking? . . . He didn’t deserve to lose his life.

“I was presented with a weapon I shouldn’t have had. I should have went home.”

See if this poor lawful individuals with absolutely no criminal history wouldn’t have been presented with that evil vile firearm he’d have never done anything wrong!

Seriously this story is so poorly written and bias I can’t even begin to tell you where to being.

The ACLU

Many of the people I talk to bring up the ACLU as some kind of paragon of civil liberties defense. I’ve never bought into this line of thinking even through I fully acknowledge that the organization has taken on some very good cases. The problem with the ACLU lie in what they consider civil liberties.

This post is here because of a conversation I had with a friend last night. My friend was pointing out the fact that not a single Republican was given a 100% score on civil liberties from the ACLU. This struck me as odd because if there is one thing you can’t fault Ron Paul on it’s civil liberties, and he’s a Republican. I decided to look up their scoring and found Dr. Paul had a measly 42% rating (I chose Ron Paul because he’s a known and predictable quantity, there are other people on there that should be given much high ratings as well). This lead me to question what the ACLU considers civil liberties.

Their pages for the House and Senate list the criteria that is used to determine each politicians ratings. Before I continue I’d like to point out when you hover over the green check marks following a politician’s name the tool tip text states, “Voted right way” while hovering over the red xs states, “Voted wrong way.” I just find their terminology rather funny.

But look at the bills they are using as judgment cases. I’ll just pull a single example otherwise this post will go on for pages. I’ll use the Probhibting Funding of Syringe Exchange Program which is stated by the ACLU as being:

On Friday, July 24, 2009, the House defeated an amendment offered by Representative Mark Souder (R-IN) to the FY 2010 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 3293) by a vote of 211-218. The Souder Amendment would have prohibited federal funds from being used to support syringe exchange programs. The ACLU opposed the Souder Amendment as a rejection of evidence-based science, which would have harmful consequences for public health. Every scientific study of needle exchange programs has concluded that access to sterile injection equipment is a proven way to reduce the spread of deadly, infectious blood-borne diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.

What the fuck does this have to do with civil liberties? This is a health care bill when you drill down to the basics. It has nothing to do with anybody’s rights in the slightest. I don’t care whether or not the ACLU stands for or against this bill, but grading politicians on it shows that they aren’t focused on civil liberties.

Beyond that another thing I hate about the ACLU is their stance on the right to keep and bear arms:

Given the reference to “a well regulated Militia” and “the security of a free State,” the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right. For seven decades, the Supreme Court’s 1939 decision in United States v. Miller was widely understood to have endorsed that view.

The Supreme Court has now ruled otherwise. In striking down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia.

The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court’s conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment. We do not, however, take a position on gun control itself. In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue.

They don’t believe the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. They also disagree with the outcome of Heller. What I find amazing is the fact that they don’t find possession nor regulation of guns a civil liberties issue. I can’t imagine what is more important to civil liberties than having a means of defending them.

So with a combination focusing on non-civil liberties issues and a willingness to ignore other civil liberty issues I must state I do not support the ACLU.

A Case for Resisting Your Assailant

Those of us advocating armed citizenry hear a common argument for those advocating a disarmed citizenry, if you just give the criminal what they want they won’t harm you. It’s an ignorant belief though because that’s not always the case. Take for example this incident:

Police say the two Iowa store clerks — one a mother of 11 — did exactly what Michael Richard Swanson demanded, his shotgun pointed at their faces.

But the 17-year-old St. Louis Park boy allegedly shot them anyway, plunging two north-central Iowa towns into shock and grief. It was unclear why Swanson, who has a history of assault and theft, would drive south and in the span of an hour allegedly become a cold-blooded killer.

About 9:05 p.m., Swanson put on a mask and entered the Crossroads convenience store in Algona, demanding cash and cigarettes. Clerk Vicky Bowman-Hall, 47, did what he said, but he shot her. The mother of 11 died at the Algona hospital.

Police say that about 10 p.m., Swanson entered the Kum and Go station in Humboldt, robbed it and shot Sheila Myers, 61. Myers was dead at the scene.

Even though the two clerks submitted to their attacker and gave into his demands he killed them. The idea of simply giving a criminal what they want and they’ll go away ignores the fact that crazy people are crazy. When you’re facing an armed attacker the situation is already volatile. You know one thing about your attacker, they’ve threatened your life.

In my book the second somebody threatens my life I no longer trust anything they say. Why should I believe somebody stating they are willing to kill me won’t do so if I simply give into their demands? What guarantee do I have that they’ll stick to their word? None.

Being armed gives you an option, a means of defending yourself. Obviously a gun isn’t a magical talisman that will ensure you walk away alive but it gives you far better chances than being completely helpless.

The Inconsistency of the ATF

Us gunnies spend a lot of time bitching about the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (AFT). We don’t bitch about the ATF because of their mandate so much as their inconsistency. For instance if I own a handgun it’s perfectly OK. The second I attach a vertical foregrip to the pistol’s front rail it becomes an Any Other Weapon (AOW) and falls under the regulations put forth in the National Firearms Act. Another case of inconsistency are rulings involving pistol grip shotguns. What is put forth in that link is a great article demonstrating the fact the ATF don’t really know what the fuck they’re doing and thus consistency isn’t their strong point.

Hey President Calderon I Have a Solution

It seems the President of Mexico is once again trying to tell us what to do:

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has told the BBC the US should do more to reduce the demand for drugs that is fuelling violence in Mexico.

You want us to do something to reduce the demand for drugs? Sure thing we’ll legalize it all and end the war on drugs. Much like Portugal we should see a drop in drug related violence once they’re legitimized. Of course that’s not acceptable:

Mr Calderon and his counterparts from Colombia and Costa Rica, Juan Manuel Santos and Laura Chinchilla, said legalisation of cannabis in California would send a contradictory message.

God damn it! We offer a solution and you spit on it. What the fuck are we supposed to do?

“It is confusing for our people to see that while we have lost lives and we invest vast resources in the drug war, in the consumer countries they promote proposals like the Californian referendum to legalise the production, the sale and the consumption of marijuana,” said Mr Santos.

I understand that potential freedom and liberty may be confusing to you as presidential equivalent of Columbia but trust me it works. You’d be surprised how popular the idea of liberty really is.

He reiterated his long-standing view that the problem of organised crime would remain as long as the US remained the biggest consumer of drugs in the world.

If it’s no longer criminals to grow, possess, and use the stuff then organized crime will no longer profit from it. Once organized crime no longer profits from it their power base will be knocked out and thus become much less of a problem. A similar thing happened when we ended prohibition in this country many decades ago. But no story about the troubles of Mexico would be complete without the mention of the Mexican gun canard:

Obama administration officials have acknowledged that the US shares responsibility for the drug violence, on account of the demand for illegal drugs and its inability to stop weapons flowing south.

I will give the BBC one thing though, they usually do a good job of covering both sides of a story:

However, US gun rights groups question whether the US is the source for the vast majority of the illegal guns turning up in Mexico.

The majority of guns confiscated by Mexico and submitted to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for tracing do originate in the US.

However, a large number of seized weapons are not sent for tracing.

There is your reason so many guns submitted for tracing are found to originate in the US, not many guns are being submitted. For instance there really is no point is submitting a fully automatic AK-47 to the US for tracing being finding such weapons for a reasonable price (as any such weapon made after 1968 1986 is illegal) is practically impossible.

EDIT 2010-10-27 21:05: Had the wrong date posted. It’s corrected now thanks to Jeff.